The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 eBook

I have not considered it necessary to prove that if
Cabot’s landfall were Cape North he could not
have discovered the low lying shore of Prince Edward
Island on the same day. I have preferred to show
that Prince Edward Island was not known as an island
and did not appear on any map for one hundred years
after John Cabot’s death. If Cabot had possessed
a modern map, and had been looking for Prince Edward
Island, and had pushed on without landing at the north
cape of Cape Breton, and had shaped his course southward,
he might have seen it in a long Midsummer Day, but
Cabot did not press on. He landed and examined
the country, and found close to it St. John’s
Island, which he also examined. Upon that easternmost
point of this Nova Scotian land of our common country
John Cabot planted the banner of St. George on June
24, 1497, more than one year before Columbus set foot
upon the main continent of America, and now, after
four hundred years, despite all the chances and changes
of this Western World, that banner is floating there,
a witness to our existing union with our distant mother-land
across the ocean.

THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA

VASCO DA GAMA SAILS AROUND AFRICA

A.D. 1498

CASPAR CORREA[1]

The same goal which attracted the Spaniards westward
drew the Portuguese south, the desire to find a sea
route to India, and thus garner the enormous profits
of the trade in spices and other Indian wealth.
In the early years of the fifteenth century the Portuguese,
overshadowed by the Spanish kingdom, which almost
enclosed their country, realized that they could extend
their territory only by colonizing beyond seas.
They began, therefore, to send out expeditions, and
in 1410 discovered the island of Madeira. Soon
afterward discoveries were undertaken by Prince Henry,
called the “Navigator,” whose whole life
was given to these enterprises. Before his death,
1460, his Portuguese mariners, in successive voyages,
had worked their way well down the western coast of
Africa. In 1462 an expedition reached Sierra
Leone, almost half way down the continent. Nine
years later the equator was passed, and in 1486 Bartholomew
Dias sailed around the southern point of Africa, which
he had been sent to discover. On his return voyage,
1487, he found the Cape of Good Hope, having before
doubled it without knowing that he had done so.[2]

To Portuguese navigators the way to India by this
route was soon made clear. In 1497 Vasco da Gama
was placed by King Emanuel I of Portugal in command
of an expedition of three small ships sent to discover
such a route. He sailed from Lisbon in July of
that year, in November doubled the Cape of Good Hope,
arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India,
in May, 1498, and in September, 1499, returned to Lisbon.
He was accompanied by his brother Paulo, who, with
other of the celebrated navigator’s companions,
appears in the following account of this great achievement.
The quaint narrative was written by the chronicler
who accompanied the expedition in person.